


A Poor Substitute

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-15
Updated: 2004-06-15
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Wesley and doubts and very vaguely implied Wesley/Angel UST (so vague that I didn't feel comfortable listing this as M/M).  Set during "I've Got You Under My Skin."





	

It honestly didn't mean anything. He was bickering with Cordelia, and he supposed--knowing Cordelia, even if he'd never met Doyle--that Angel had grown used to telling the two of them to stop arguing. It was the force of habit that had led Angel to call him "Doyle," that was all.

And after all, there were far worse circumstances under which he could have been called the wrong name. Not by Angel, obviously--not by anyone, recently, but certainly not by Angel. This really didn't mean anything.

It didn't even have to mean that they resented his presence here. Obviously, they wished Doyle were still alive; he understood that. Doyle had been their friend, and they missed him. But they didn't blame _Wesley_ for it. He hadn't even been there. 

He hadn't showed up until later, until Doyle was already gone. And now he was working here, like Doyle had. Except that Doyle had had the visions to justify his presence there, and Wesley didn't even have that. He didn't have anything, really. Cordelia could find information on the Internet faster than he could find it in his books, and Angel certainly didn't need any help fighting, and Wesley was just here. 

Being called by a dead man's name. 

Angel had been grateful for his presence at first. Wesley knew that. He'd actually meant it, Wesley thought, when he'd said that he'd been lucky to have Wesley there with him at that auction. Wesley needed him to have meant it, at least; that was why he'd kept coming back. If it had just been that he needed money, he could have worked somewhere else, done something else, but this was what he'd always wanted to do, or close enough to it, and he'd actually been able to do some good. He'd helped Angel.

And Angel had said that he'd been lucky to have Wesley there, and Wesley had believed it. Wesley had wanted to believe it, at least, although he'd decided early on that his reasons for that were best left unexplored. 

Now, of course, he was glad that he hadn't explored them, had listened to his common sense, because now Wesley was starting to doubt that Angel had meant what he'd said to Wesley, or at least to doubt that Angel had meant anything beyond that particular instant. To doubt that these people had started to think about him as a friend. They'd never think of him as a friend, because he wasn't Doyle. Angel would have been much happier to have Doyle there, Wesley was sure, and so would Cordelia. They'd cared about Doyle, very much so, and he was, at best, only tolerated. 

Wesley was just the replacement, and he wasn't doing any better at that than he had at anything else he'd ever tried in his life.


End file.
